Chapter Fourteen
WILDER
S tanding atop the jagged cliffs at the edge of the world, black mountains looming overhead, Wilder stared at what he and his apprentice had found.
He had awoken that morning with a bad feeling.
Overnight there had been an almost imperceivable shift in the air, and over the past few days at the fortress, he’d heard half a dozen complaints about a foul smell drifting down from the rocks at the border of their territory.
Those things alone were cause enough for Wilder to investigate, given the state of the midrealms. It hadn’t taken much to convince Thea to join him.
Now, in the early morning light, they could see a nest of gnarled vines that had sprouted against the rock. Its offshoots were the colour of dark seaweed, and they seemed to emerge from the face of the cliff itself. A putrid, rotting stench filled the air.
‘What is that?’ Thea murmured at his shoulder.
‘A vine blight,’ Wilder replied, surveying the mass of writhing green tendrils. Gods, it had something in its clutches —
‘A monster?’
Wilder nodded. ‘I had a report of one emerging in Naarva,’ he told her. ‘I knew it was only a matter of time until one found its way here too. While you were with Audra, I heard one of the guards complaining about the smell drifting down from here…’
‘It’s disgusting.’
‘The smell is the least of it.’ Wilder paced the area in front of the thing, not daring to touch it, but trying to ascertain what, exactly, the blight had made its victim.
‘From what the alchemists tell me, they start as little more than a seed, drifting through a tear in the Veil… From there, they find a host and feed off it until they’re strong enough.
Then, they grow of their own accord, devouring everything in their path. ’
Thea frowned. ‘But this is coming out of the cliff …’
‘Is it?’ Wilder asked, not taking his eyes off the monstrosity, his blood running cold as he realised what it had trapped in its snare.
Thea’s sharp intake of breath sounded behind him as she, too, saw it.
Membranous red-and-black wings were crumpled beneath the vines’ death grip. Patches of what looked to be human skin webbed with black veins peeked through the creeping undergrowth.
‘Is it alive?’ Thea murmured.
Wilder forced the bile back down his throat. He knew their kind well, far better than he cared to admit to his apprentice. But he couldn’t help correcting her: ‘He. It’s a he .’
‘What? It’s got wings . The… blight… It’s eating another monster,’ Thea argued.
As though sensing their presence, the blight gripped its prey tighter, the creature within its grasp emitting a moan of pain.
‘Do you think it’s one of hers? ’ Thea asked. ‘Do you think the Daughter of Darkness sent it here?’
‘Maybe…’ Wilder allowed.
Thea stepped forward and Wilder’s arm shot out to stop her.
‘Those vines are poisonous. A mere brush against your skin will cause immeasurable pain. It can get into your brain, too – with the right point of entry, it can render you a husk of the person you were.’
His apprentice shuddered. ‘How do we kill it?’
Wilder braced himself. ‘First, you’re going to put the creature it has trapped out of his misery.’
‘The other monster? What is it?’
‘Something that’s part shadow wraith.’ He knew the words would shock her, given all they had faced together.
As expected, her eyes widened. ‘Then shouldn’t we just let the blight kill it?’
‘No.’
‘I didn’t know a monster could be half human…’ Thea murmured, frowning at the sight.
‘Now you know,’ Wilder allowed. ‘You’re aware of the differences between wraiths and reapers?’
‘Reapers are the sires of the wraiths – the leaders of their kind, of a sort,’ Thea recited. ‘They’re bigger. They have horns and more power.’
Wilder nodded, suppressing a shudder. ‘The reapers aren’t only the sires of the full wraiths, but other half-creatures like this as well.
In the Bloodwoods, when the reaper reached into your chest…
It was trying to turn you into something like that, or worse.
’ He nodded to the poor thing in the blight’s clutches.
‘Gods…’ Thea murmured in horror.
Wilder ended his explanation there. He wasn’t about to tell her of his experiences with half-wraiths – or, as some preferred to be called, the shadow-touched.
Thea hesitated. ‘If it’s part wraith, does that mean I need to carve out its heart? I don’t think I can get to it —’
Wilder shook his head. ‘A stab to the heart should do it. He’s not a full wraith.’ He nodded to the dagger of Naarvian steel at her belt. He didn’t want to make her do this, didn’t want to risk her brushing the vine, but if she was to be a Warsword, she had to learn.
Looking pale, Thea unsheathed her blade.
Wilder bit back further words of warning, forced down the instinct to reach for the dagger and do the deed himself.
Thea examined the blight’s tendrils. ‘I don’t think I can get a clean thrust to the heart,’ she murmured.
Wilder hated his next words. ‘Then cut the creature out of the blight’s grip.’
She raised a brow. ‘Cut it out, then kill it?’
‘Yes.’
Brow furrowed, she went to work, slicing at the vines around the half-wraith, the blight making a high-pitched wailing sound as she did.
Wincing against the noise, Wilder watched her as she kept carving through the first monster to get to the second, careful not to brush against the vine, using her swords to manoeuvre it off the half-wraith.
There was a blur of movement. And a cry of surprise escaped Thea as not a vine, but a whip of shadow suddenly lashed out from the rock, the wraith creature tumbling free from the blight’s grip.
His heart in his throat, Wilder lunged for her as the tendril of shadow wrapped around Thea’s neck.
Her blades clattered to the ground, her hands shooting to where the obsidian power threatened to crush her windpipe.
Wilder was there in an instant, but more coils of darkness shot from the half-wraith, who moaned on the ground, sounding more human than monster.
Thea rasped as she was lifted into the air before his eyes.
Wilder yelled.
He’d seen the same thing happen to Malik. He’d seen almost the same thing happen to Talemir. And it had only been three weeks ago that another creature of the darkness had threatened to take Thea from him.
Incensed, he slashed at the tendrils of shadow magic, severing them like limbs from a body. They poured from the monster Thea had freed, as though they knew no master, as though they sought to wreak as much pain and havoc on the realms as they could before they left them.
Wilder sliced and hacked, Thea’s legs kicking in mid-air in his peripheral vision.
No – he wouldn’t let another person he loved be harmed on his watch. He wouldn’t allow it. Because he wouldn’t survive it.
Breaking free of the lashing whips of power, Wilder staggered towards the half-wraith and plunged his sword into the human-like chest.
His steel aimed true.
Thea dropped to the ground instantly, her eyes streaming, a ring of red around her throat. She dry-retched on all fours, coughing and spluttering.
Wilder was on his knees beside her, a hand on her back. ‘Are you alright? Gods, Thea, talk to me.’
His heart was about to pound straight through his chest. Every moment where he’d ever lost this battle flashed before his eyes, clutching his heart in an unforgiving fist. Too many had been hurt on his watch. If she was —
But at last, Thea sat back, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, blinking back more tears. ‘I’m alright,’ she rasped, ‘I’m alright,’ as though trying to convince herself.
Wilder nearly collapsed with relief. It was all he could do not to throw his arms around her and hold her close. If he did that, he’d never let her go.
Blood leaked from the half-wraith corpse, spilling onto the cliff, running in rivers between their boots.
Thea stood, staring curiously at the red dripping from Wilder’s blade, brow furrowed. ‘Why isn’t it black?’
Gods, Wilder would have to report this to Dratos. The blight’s prey had been one of his for sure. But there had been no way to save the half-wraith within. He had been too far gone, his mind already infected.
‘Hawthorne?’ Thea pressed.
A knot formed in his stomach at the use of his surname. He missed those few occasions where she had murmured his given name against his lips, had said it with a smile…
Wilder shook his head. ‘Not now,’ he told her.
He wasn’t ready to explore the nuances of wraiths and those who were shadow-touched, and he wasn’t sure she was ready to hear it.
It had only been a matter of weeks since her own encounter with the reaper, since its dark power had nearly touched her heart.
‘You’re sure you’re alright?’ he asked, trying to keep the emotion from his voice.
Thea nodded, though the mark around her throat was bright red. She retrieved her dagger from the ground and sheathed it at her waist.
Wilder squared his shoulders. ‘We still need to deal with the blight.’
‘Fire?’
Wilder shook his head. ‘A sure way to help it spread. Its pollen would easily drift away on the ash and find new hosts elsewhere.’
‘How, then?’
‘Lightning.’
Thea blinked at him. ‘You can’t be serious.’
Folding his arms over his chest and fixing her with a cool stare, Wilder shrugged. ‘Audra said you should try, that you need an outlet. Here it is. Do your worst.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
‘No? You managed well enough with the reaper.’ He didn’t mention how she hadn’t summoned her magic in her own defence just now.
‘That was different.’
The vine blight writhed, a new tendril snaking forth through the fresh blood on the ground.
‘Why?’
‘Because…’ Thea avoided his eyes and clasped her arms around herself.
‘Because why?’ he pressed. ‘Why was it different then?’
‘Because you were in danger. Because I —’ The words came out fast, and hung suspended in time between them. From the way Thea was blushing, it was a truth she hadn’t wanted to admit.
Wilder did the decent thing and pretended he hadn’t heard her. ‘What about after? On the clifftops?’
‘ I don’t know. ’ She snapped the words this time. ‘I don’t know how it works. Clearly. ’
‘So try.’
‘And what if I shoot a bolt of lightning through you by mistake?’
‘I would have thought you’d find that appealing.’
‘More so by the minute,’ she muttered.
Every part of Wilder longed to pull her close, to reassure her that she could master her magic, that the storms were hers to wield. But that was not the role he’d claimed. No, he had claimed the role of mentor and master, of a hardened teacher.
‘I don’t have all day,’ he said bluntly.
She cut him a furious glare and he did his best not to flinch at the tempest brewing in her eyes. Jaw clenched, his apprentice turned her back to him, her head tilting back to face the sky.
Body tense, Wilder didn’t dare speak, didn’t move as he noted Thea’s fingers flexing at her sides, as he heard her exhale sharply.
He waited for the crack of thunder, for the spark of light at her hands.
But nothing happened.
He waited another beat.
‘Fuck!’ Thea whirled around. ‘I can’t.’
‘I doubt throwing a tantrum helps.’
‘Fuck you,’ she spat.
Wilder raised a brow, irritation prickling. ‘Apprentices don’t speak to their masters like that.’
‘I have no master.’
‘ Yes, you do, ’ he said, voice raised. ‘You made damn sure of it.’
‘You are my mentor. ’
Widler smelt the incoming storm then, the rich, earthy scent tangling in the briny sea breeze, washing away the stench of the blight. ‘Same difference.’
Thea’s eyes narrowed, before she glanced down at her hands in surprise.
Where small sparks had started to surge at her fingertips.
‘Try again,’ Wilder commanded quietly.
His apprentice rolled her shoulders and inhaled deeply, her hands tensing as she tipped her face back to the sky.
Audra had told him to talk her through it, to tell her to breathe and focus, lean into the restlessness within.
But Wilder knew in that moment that another word from him would send Thea hurtling over the brink of destruction, which would only serve to make her recoil from her power when she needed it most. And so he said nothing.
And nothing happened.
‘Fuck this,’ Thea muttered eventually, turning back to him with accusation in her eyes. ‘There’s obviously another way to kill that thing. I don’t see any other supposed storm wielders slaying monsters around the midrealms.’
Wilder pulled a vial from his pocket, uncorking it with his teeth and pouring several drops of liquid over the blight. ‘Courtesy of our alchemist friends.’
Ribbons of steam hissed from the vines upon contact, and the monster recoiled, emitting an eerie whistling sound. A faint burning smell filled the air. Wilder didn’t look away until the whole blight had turned to stone, now a mangled addition to the cliff face.
He felt Thea’s incredulous stare boring into him.
‘Is there a problem, Princess?’
‘Why didn’t you just use that to begin with?’ She glared at him, knuckles white around the grip of her dagger.
‘Think you can take me?’ he said flatly.
Thea’s nostrils flared as she sized him up, jaw grinding. ‘Not today…’ she murmured. ‘But one day.’
‘You’d die if you tried.’
Her chest rose and fell then, her fate stone along with it. ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
Wilder closed the gap between them in an instant and disarmed her, snatching the blade from her belt.
Twirling his brother’s dagger between his fingers menacingly.
‘However you’ve lived your life until now isn’t good enough,’ he told her coldly.
‘You cannot be some irresponsible fool because you think you won’t die.
There are fates worse than death. And a Warsword can and will face them all.
Your recklessness is a liability, and I won’t train someone who flings themselves at danger without a care. It’s a waste of my fucking time.’
Thea opened and closed her mouth, and despite his harsh words, Wilder found himself leaning in, desperately wanting to trace the curve of those lips with his tongue, wanting to breathe in the heady scent of her. But he didn’t let the mask falter.
‘Are we clear?’
His apprentice seemed to war with herself, and he could have sworn he felt a flicker of that storm magic ripple off her again.
‘I said, are we clear? ’
At last, she met his gaze. ‘Crystal.’
And then she grabbed him by the shirt and dragged his mouth to hers.